Holding Up History

Oct. 30, 2007

Before his disastrous turn as the nation’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzales was the White House counsel behind some of the administration’s most egregious legal maneuvers, including President Bush’s 2001 executive order unilaterally repealing the presumption of public access to presidential papers enshrined in the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The executive order, which Mr. Gonzales drafted, made it significantly harder for historians and the public to gain access to a former president’s official records, and it provided an early glimpse of two Bush White House themes: a mania for secrecy and a dangerously inflated view of presidential authority to override existing law.

Six years and one Congressional power shift later, there is ample support in the House and Senate for repealing the executive order’s cumbersome rules, which give presidents, former presidents and even their heirs power to withhold sensitive documents well beyond the standard 12-year waiting period. A bipartisan measure reversing the presumption of nondisclosure and reasonably limiting executive privilege claims passed the House in March by a veto-proof majority. In June, it cleared Senate committee review.

Yet approval by the full Senate is in doubt because of a single Republican senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Mr. Bunning has declined to detail his reasons for exercising his senatorial prerogative to hold up consideration of the bill beyond telling The Dallas Morning News that the “president ought to have the right to withhold any records he chooses.” His colleagues and all Americans are owed a fuller explanation of why he believes a politician’s desire to hide embarrassing information for no legitimate reason of national security should trump the public’s right to know.

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, should not let the bill die. If Mr. Bunning will not lift his hold, it should be possible to round up the 60 votes needed to get the bill around him and onto the floor.